This morning on WRCB I read the most ridiculious news story in all of my 61 years. And this story comes out of Atlanta by the way. It seems that MARTA (Atlanta's rapid transit trains) have changed the name of one of their lines from yellow to gold because some of the Asian population there found the word yellow to be in some stupid way "racial." I was half asleep when that story crawled across the bottom of the screen so I sat and waited for it to come across again.
And as I was rolling on the floor with laughter while trying to tell it to my wife, it came across again and she read it also. Now can someone please explain to me how the name of a color can even be considered racial? If a color can be considered racial then I guess all the yellow paint is going to be taken off the shelves, all the yellow crayons will be needed to taken out of the boxes, all the traffic lights will need something other than yellow used for caution, and the list will go on for miles.
And as far as that goes would the word red be offensive to Native Americans, is black offensive to African Americans, what about green offensive to Irish Americans? Maybe we need to have the word sun banned because the planes that attacked Pearl Harbor had the rising sun painted on them. But what I find totally stupid is MARTA even considering changing, much less actually doing it.
Lewis Grizzard, the humorist from Cowetta County Georgia once said, "If you don't like it here, Delta is ready when you are." It's becoming a sad, sad world when some find names of colors racial and the powers that be bow down to them.
Craig Collier
zook1@bellsouth.net